Sunday, 4 July 2010

July's Observations...

Speed of Doom is an excellent collection of Doom levels, though it doesn't quite balance for UV -fast.

Currently listening to a bunch of samples from Juno, here's some brief thoughts:

Chloe - One In Other: Very dull minimal techno with hints of dub and generic vocal ahhs, croons.Micky Milan - C'est Un Bombe: Decent 80s disco funk!Mossa - Festine: Shuffled, funky minimal techno with a house vibe and lots of glitchery. I'm falling asleep after a few seconds... "I Am You" has a nice throbbing-synth-drone and soft hats, making for a dreamy piece. Rest of the album is the usual hut-SSS-hut-SSS nonsense though.Patrick Pulsinger - Impassive Skies: Fairly minimal, melodic tech-house with sax, vocals, e-piano (!), later merging into more electro (A To Z) and downbeat (Cache Wash). Still falling asleep, although that might be the vaguely interesting final track which is a beatless ambient piece with soft piano set to some glitching effects.Kagami - Better Arts: Japanese to the rescue! Mondo-techno madness, fast BPMs, disco licks, big snares, cheeky synths... and two people chatting over some of the tracks? Keeping me awake at least!Deepchord presents Echospace - Liumin: It should be likeable, distant washy pads and synths, soft drums... you know, DUB TECHNO! Christ, aren't we done with this sound yet? Rod's a decent guy but I do wish he'd resist ploughing the same furrow, and introduce some new sounds. Sub-Marine is a fairly generic minimal-bloop-techno fest at least, rather than the usual reverb-bashing. Firefly even has a trace of melody - and is probably the best tune here - but the whole second disc is a bunch of field recordings. A certain sect of people will enjoy the living cajones off this stuff, but it aint Phylyps, let alone Enforcement! Though - thankfully - it's also not Intrusion.OST & KJEX - Cajun Lunch: Funky nu-disco / minimal house with pretty decent vocals.Cari Lekebusch - State Of The Art: Okay THIS is an event. One that I would normally rush out of my chair for, but it's minimal. Yeah I'd known Cari had gone minimal a couple of years back after being massively disappointed with a few EPs he'd put out. But why choose NOW, 7 years after his last LP, to put out another album? There's nothing unique about any of the tracks, they barely even sound like Cari's stamp is on them (outside of the shuffled hats, they're a Lekebusch TM). No "Urthur" punch, no "Tyrant" buildups. The ONLY reprieve is the mighty Krister Linder providing some vox on "Rising Star", and "Art of Technology" is a reasonably reasonable piece of electro. I guess. Considering this is from the guy that gave us the relentless "Det Jag Vet" 11 years ago (!), this is DEPRESSING.Wehbba - Full Circle: More minimalistic than his previous peak hour productions, but at least it's funky and melodic. Not bad!

... and a slightly older release: Literon - Mutant: The A-side is a totally generic, dull piece of monotonous minimal with little to redeem it. The B-side, "Roll-Off" is - on the other hand - bloody fantastic. It's minimal, sure, but it doesn't rely at all on the usual blips, bloops, side-chained noise washes etc. Huge, sloppy AND crunchy snare/claps with a slightly shuffled rhythm give this that essential head-noddiness, and a slightly noisy gated bassy "pad" synth part plays a simple but melodic part underneath, as some clangy peak-time bells gradually build and build. Great tune, tremendously hypnotic, minimal done right!